Much of the buzz around artificial intelligence has surrounded companies focused on general purpose artificial intelligence, as opposed to companies applying AI algorithms like machine learning and deep learning in specific industries.

While there are plenty of baby-monitoring cameras on the market, they generally produce a lot of footage for you to review. But Invidyo is using A.I. to give parents daily highlights when they are away at work and smarter notifications, when necessary.

In Q1'16, there were over 140 deals to startups focused on AI. Khosla Ventures emerges as most active VC investor in the category.

Equity deals to startups in artificial intelligence — including companies applying AI solutions to verticals like healthcare, advertising, and finance as well as those developing general-purpose AI tech — increased nearly 6x, from roughly 70 in 2011 to nearly 400 in 2015.

Q1’16 saw a new peak in deal activity to the category.

Using the CB Insights database, we studied funding trends to AI-based companies, including:

CrowdFlower, a crowdsourced data-cleaning and tagging platform, has closed a fresh $10 million in funding in a round led by Microsoft Ventures, Canvas Ventures, and Trinity Ventures.

Founded out of San Francisco in 2009, CrowdFlower had previously raised $28 million, including a $12.5 million round back in 2014, but the company says it will use its cash influx to expedite the adoption of a new machine-learning product called CrowdFlower AI.

Affectiva, a startup developing “emotion recognition technology” that can read people’s moods from their facial expressions captured in digital videos, raised $14 million in a Series D round of funding led by Fenox Venture Capital.

According to co-founder Rana el Kaliouby, the Waltham, Mass.-based company wants its technology to become the de facto means of adding emotional intelligence and empathy to any interactive product, and the best way for organizations to attain unvarnished insights about customers, patients or constituents.

The possibility that a malevolent artificial intelligence might pose a serious threat to humankind has become a hotly debated issue. Various high profile individuals from the physicist Stephen Hawking to the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk have warned of the danger.

Which is why the field of artificial intelligence safety is emerging as an important discipline. Computer scientists have begun to analyze the unintended consequences of poorly designed AI systems, of AI systems created with faulty ethical frameworks or ones that do not share human values.